Suit Claiming Satanic Abuse Nearing the Jury : Litigation: The daughters’ lawyer says it is evident that they were brutalized by their mother. The mother’s attorney says no evidence to that effect was produced.

After 11 days of lurid and often sensational testimony involving alleged satanic rituals, it comes down to a matter of belief.

On one side, an attorney says all the evidence clearly shows that his two clients suffered from severe abuse in their early childhood at the hands of their mother, now 76.

On the other side, the silver-haired Mission Viejo resident--accused of subjecting her daughters to acts of rape, incest and murder during secret satanic rituals--flatly denies the allegations. “Not one scintilla” of objective evidence was produced to prove that any acts of abuse took place, her lawyer says.

These were the closing arguments heard by a Superior Court jury on Wednesday in one of the more bizarre civil lawsuits ever to be presented in an Orange County court. Since the start of the trial late last month, jury members have listened to graphic accounts of satanic rituals in which the victims allegedly were forced to kill strangers, participate in animal sacrifices and submit to group rape.

The sisters, now 48 and 35, charge that their mother sexually and physically abused them during the rituals from the time they were infants until they were young women. They also accuse their mother of abusing the older sister’s 11-year-old daughter.

To protect the girl, they were allowed to file the suit using only their initials. The defendant is being called by a pseudonym.

R. Richard Farnell, attorney for the plaintiffs, told the jury Wednesday that it could rule in the sisters’ favor without believing that all the acts of rape, incest and murder actually occurred.

“I’m not asking you to believe every single thing you’ve heard here,” he said in his closing argument. “ . . . The question is, were (the women) abused? And with this evidence . . . there can be no question that each of these plaintiffs was severely abused.”

But defense attorney Tom M. Allen contended that the case boils down to the daughters’ word against their mother’s because Farnell produced no concrete evidence that any of the alleged acts of abuse took place.

“There wasn’t one body, there wasn’t one mutilated animal, there wasn’t a single drop of blood,” Allen told the jury as the sisters and their mother sat tight-lipped without looking at each other.

For much of his argument, Allen sought to discredit the plaintiffs’ star witness, a psychologist who helped the women revive long-repressed memories after the older sister visited him for marital counseling in 1988.

Allen said that Dr. Timothy Maas, director of counseling at Seaview Counseling Inc. in Huntington Beach, did not use any “standardized approach” when he determined that the women were abused as children.

Instead, Allen contended that Maas, a self-described believer in the existence of satanic ritualistic abuse, coaxed the two into creating memories of cult abuse during their sessions with him. Allen cited the testimony of the younger sister’s estranged husband, who told the jury that Maas had tried to persuade him that a cold he suffered from was actually a repressed memory of sexual abuse.

“This isn’t subtle” influencing, Allen said. “This is direct suggestion.”

Farnell dismissed the idea of suggestion, saying it was “preposterous” to suggest that Maas could have goaded the women into fabricating “a whole scenario, a whole history of incredible abuse.”

He also pointed out that the estranged husband had conceded that he did not see his wife being coached in any way when her dark memories began to surface.

Farnell accused Allen of trying to use Maas as a “lightning rod” to draw the heat away from the mother. Other psychologists had agreed that the daughters and granddaughter were afflicted with multiple personalities, a disorder that can be caused by “severe abuse” in early childhood.

Allen countered that there was no physical evidence of such abuse.

For example, the older sister claimed to have carried two pregnancies to full term when she was in her early teens, but a woman who knew her at the time testified that she never showed signs of pregnancy, Allen said.

“All of the evidence is focused on a single thing--the testimony of the plaintiffs, testimony that by its nature can’t be disputed because it’s just too fluid,” he said. “You can’t pick up water.”

But medical records showed the 11-year-old girl to have “non-accidental” internal scarring, which would points to act of rape, Farnell said.

“That was physical evidence, ladies and gentlemen,” he told the jury.

Under instructions by Judge Robert D. Monarch, the jury is scheduled to begin deliberations in the case today.